Chapter 4 - THE PRICE OF A PERFECT LIFE
I stood up slowly.
I looked from my seven-year-old son to the wealthy, powerful man standing across the aisle.
Arthur Vance did not look like a monster. He looked like an executive who had just lost a hostile takeover.
“Arthur,” I said, my voice dangerously low. “Explain this.”
Isabella grabbed her father’s arm.
“Dad? What is Lucas talking about? Were you at Daniel’s house the night Catalina left?”
Arthur looked at his daughter, then at my mother.
My mother gave him a sharp, warning glare.
But Arthur was a businessman. He knew when a ship was sinking.
“I was securing your future, Isabella,” Arthur said, his voice surprisingly steady.
He looked at me.
“Three years ago, Daniel’s company was completely bankrupt.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“What?” I said.
“Oh, spare me the innocent act, Daniel,” Arthur sneered. “Your mother came to me begging for a bailout. The Reyes family was three weeks away from losing the estate, the cars, the business. Everything.”
I looked at my mother.
She refused to meet my eyes.
“I didn’t know,” I whispered.
“Of course you didn’t,” Arthur laughed bitterly. “Your mother shielded you from the ugly math. But I don’t run a charity. I told Beatrice I would inject the capital to save your legacy on one condition.”
He gestured toward Isabella.
“A merger. A real one. I wanted my daughter married into the Reyes name to solidify our market share.”
Isabella let go of his arm as if his sleeve had caught fire.
“You sold me?” she choked out.
“I secured you a dynasty,” Arthur corrected her.
He turned his cold eyes back to me.
“But there was a problem. You were already married to a nobody. A waitress with no connections and no pedigree.”
“So you bought her off,” I said, the disgust rising in my throat.
“We tried to,” Arthur said. “I brought the deposit slip that night. Two million dollars. I told her to take it and walk.”
“And she didn’t,” I realized.
“No,” Arthur spat. “She ripped the check in half. She told me she wouldn’t leave her children for all the money in Manhattan.”
I felt a sudden, overwhelming surge of pride for the wife I thought had abandoned me.
But it was followed immediately by dread.
“If she didn’t take the money,” I said, “how did you get her to leave?”
Arthur looked at my mother.
“Beatrice?” he said. “Care to explain your part of the negotiation?”
My mother stood tall, her posture rigid.
“I did what I had to do,” she said coldly.
Before she could finish, Elena stepped forward again.
The housekeeper reached into her apron a second time.
She pulled out a crumpled, folded piece of construction paper.
“Lucas drew this the morning after his mother disappeared,” Elena said, her voice shaking with unshed tears. “I found it in the trash can in your mother’s office.”
She handed the paper to me.
It was a child’s drawing of our family in crayon.
But it wasn’t the front that mattered.
Elena turned it over.
On the back, written in Catalina’s frantic, rushed handwriting, was a message.
Daniel. I didn't leave you. Beatrice has the hospital papers. If I stay, she will lock me away and take my babies. I have to run. I will come back when I am strong enough to fight her.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
“Hospital papers?” I asked the room.
May you like
Arthur Vance pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Your mother had a private psychiatrist declare Catalina violently unfit during her postpartum depression,” Arthur said flatly. “She held the commitment papers over her head. Leave, or be institutionalized and lose custody forever.”
